Looking ahead

[Blogger's note: I've gone back and forth on the issue, and have decided that I would keep "2008" in the title of the blog for historical purposes. I don't have to, really, but I thought it might remind everyone when we started. If there is a hue and cry to change it, I will, but as it stands as is, the name will remain the same.]

For Lindependence in 2009:

Chennai, India, is a go, and I’ll start working with Sam on bringing Lindia — that’s the Indian version of “Lindependence” — to the folks in that city.

Santa Fe, New Mexico, U.S.A., is a maybe, and a spring or fall event would be preferable to a summer or winter event.

Boulder Creek, Calif., U.S.A., is a probable — we have space and we have the experience of the first Lindependence just six miles south in Felton to back us up. It’s just that things go slowly in the Santa Cruz Mountains and a date hasn’t been confirmed.

Redmond, Wash. U.S.A., although brought up in jest here, may not be part of the equation. But it could be.

All of which is to say that we have a pretty clean slate going forward in 2009 — there are a lot of opportunities for those with the inclination to host an event, and if you go to a mirror, you might find the perfect candidate. This, coupled with some of the developments in the FOSS world make this a year of opportunity for FOSS advocates everywhere.

Happy New Year, and lets make 2009 the year Lindependence — and Lindia — take hold.

Coming up in 2009

[This is a reprint from the Larry the Free Software Guy blog on the same topic.]

A lot has been written so far about what to expect next year — some valid, some not.

But has that ever stopped me from joining the year-end pile-on? Perish the thought.

So here are 10 things to expect in 2009.

Or not.

Remember, objects may be closer than they appear, and your mileage may vary.

1. 2009 will be the year of Linux. But so will 2010, as well as 2011 and 2012. In fact, by 2013, the last pair of eyes on the planet will finally glaze over when a Linux writer proclaims the following year to be the year of Linux, and the more thoughtful pundits will just know that it’s now understood that the next year will be our year, for whatever reason, and they’ll write about something a tad more significant.

9. Fedora 11 will outshine Fedora 10. As hard as it may be to believe — and after a month I still can’t find a flaw with Fedora 10 — Fedora 11 will be an encore performance of what can best be described as a rock-solid distro, even for machines that go back a few years (in my case, a Dell 5000 Inspiron laptop and a Dell Optiplex desktop). Sadly, people will continue to be under the mistaken impression that Fedora is too “cutting edge” for anyone other than the most experienced superuser who might be too lazy to negotiate the Gentoo labyrinth (yes, that’s a gauntlet thrown at the feet of my Fedora colleagues to work next year on dispelling that stupid myth . . . ).

8. The UFC pits Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman against each other in a feature bout. What happens though is not one of those ridiculous near-death experiences for some poor troglodyte who normally gets suckered into the ring, but an epiphany for the entire FOSS community: Stallman and Torvalds meet at mid-ring and circle each other warily. Stallman opens the bout by saying maybe he was a little hasty in demanding GNU be stuck on the front of Linux, but Torvalds comes back with openly welcoming the option of joining the two names. Barriers between open source and free software dissolve. GNOME and KDE advocates embrace in a worldwide “kumbaya.” Planets align. Then I wake up.

7. Zenwalk increases the pace of its development. It becomes Zenrun, and in finding that they can add and release improvements to an already above-average distro at an even faster pace, they rename it Zenfly in 2010.

6. Lindependence comes to Redmond, Wash. The hall is rented, the fliers posted, and the riot police stand at the ready, but they remain wary since they don’t want to repeat the WTO fiasco in Seattle a decade ago. Nevertheless, yours truly — in a tribute to another overweight bald guy in the digital industry — opens the event with an insane onstage monkey dance that also brings him to within inches of a heart attack while Ken Starks unsuccessfully diverts the press’ attention. The Digital Tipping Point’s Christian Einfeldt, however, gets it all on video. Meanwhile, Debian, Fedora, Mandriva, OpenSUSE and Ubuntu reps — along with others who choose to join Lindependence in 2009 — hand out live CDs and demonstrate their distros. Yes, that’s Red Hat’s “Truth Happens” video (click here for Quick Time fans) looping in the background all the while.

5. Mandriva gets in touch with its feminine side. This distro renames itself Womandriva and becomes a more reasonable, nurturing distro, finally dropping the adolescent Mandrake zeitgeist from its early days. The distro’s leadership also realizes what a huge mistake it was to let Adam Williamson go and rectifies that situation, adding a huge bonus to his salary.

4. The Madagascar Penguins join Tux as the Linux mascots. Skipper, Kowalski, Rico and the Private make Tux one of their own in their commando unit. Incidentally — this is true (you can look it up) — on the Madagascar DVD, the penguins provide their own commentary on their scenes. When Private is struggling to operate a computer while taking over the ship, Skipper comments, “What are you doing up there, playing Tetris? You told me you knew Linux, Private!” Just smile and wave, boys, smile and wave.

3. Windows 7 will be worse than Vista, as hard as that may be to believe. This development will result in yet another $30 million Microsoft ad campaign diverting attention from this latest offering. Realizing they picked the wrong Seinfeld character in their first campaign, the ad agency casts Jason Alexander with Bill Gates, making Gates look like the “cool one” in comparison.

2. Everyone joins the Ubuntu family. In an effort not to confuse brand new GNU/Linux users with the daunting tasks of trying to wrap their minds around 350 different distributions, distros give themselves new names: Fedbuntu, Debuntu, openBUNTU, Sabayuntu, Damn Small Buntu, CentBuntu, Dreambuntu, Slackbuntu, Pupbuntu, Mepbuntu, gNewBuntu, among others. Solbuntis and OpenSolbuntis also join the ranks.

1. Linux Foundation’s “I’m Linux” video contest’s winning entry grabs an Oscar. After Apple’s “I’m a Mac” ad campaign, and Microsoft following with a painfully original “I’m a PC” theme, the Linux Foundation garners thousands of entries in its “I’m Linux” video contest. The Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences nominates the winner, which ends up awing those judging and the statuette for Best Short Film goes to the winner.

There are other developments, like the conflicts that the new OpenBSD Christian Edition causes, which may be addressed in a later blog.

Have a happy and prosperous new year.

Exporting Lindependence

No, this is not some sort of outsourcing joke — those of you who know me know that I wouldn’t stoop that low (especially since my own job — that of a newspaper editor — could very well be shipped overseas if the CEO of the newspaper chain for which I work has his way) — but I got an e-mail recently from Sam in Chennai, India.

Sam wants to get Lindependence going in Chennai.

Sam asked me about the ins and outs, the highs and lows, and what needs to be done regarding hosting a Lindependence event in his neck of the woods. So he and I have exchanged e-mails, and suffice it to say that just having the desire and willingness to host the event is more than half the battle.

So, are there any other Sams out there?

A head start

After Portland, the common wisdom dictates that any events in November and December would get lost in the holiday shuffle. So as mentioned in an earlier post, we’re focusing on 2009 now, with preparations being made to organize events early in the year and

I’m also submitting a paper to SCaLE around Lindependence — outlining how it works and why it’s important — and if the folks in Southern California go for it, I’ll present something there. It will be great if they accept, and I have my fingers crossed.

Also, I’m wide open to ideas and suggestions. So while we’re in the starting blocks for 2009, let’s hear what you’re thinking.

Post-Portland Probabilities

You might have found it odd that I did not blog leading up to Lindependence Portland.

Or not.

The fact is that I had to give two presentations at Oregon State University on the Thursday before the event, and that took a significant deal of preparation. No one recognizes more than I do the complete irony of yours truly — a first-year computer science student — giving a lecture on Open Source to graduate students in a software engineering class. Also, the presentations for Fedora in both the class and at the OSU Linux Users Group, compounded by a 19-hour train ride (sans Internet) up the coast, left me a tad beat up and not raring to blog.

However, the Portland Lindependence event arrived on Saturday, Oct. 25, at the new offices of TouchStone Technologies in Beaverton. Ken Starks, also known as the blogger known as Helios, wrote a pretty detailed blog about the event here. And, no, I didn’t really step on Ken’s foot. There’s not much I can add to this blog item, so I won’t.

But what I did want to talk about, here and in upcoming blogs, is the future of Lindependence and where we’re going from here.

First things first: As the likelihood that Portland is the last event for 2008, Lindependence’s future looks very bright as we head into 2009. We have a couple of towns already locked on the radar and it appears that we’re going to start the year in California and New Mexico, and hopefully we can balance the locations to somewhere cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter. Though ideal, that’s not really a parameter for having Lindependence events.

What’s most promising about this is that people are picking up the ball and taking responsibility for hosting their own events. Just as David Kaplan did in Portland, others are writing and saying, “So, how do I do this?” Unfortunately, David didn’t have the benefit of a manual, but those in the future will.

Someone earlier this year outlined how the Lindependence events spurs a sort of a LUG renaissance, and for the most part this person is right. I would give this person a name, except it was penned by an alias on a forum somewhere (if he or she wants to contact me, I’d be glad to give you full credit). Long gone are the secret handshakes and the special language (although the language still exists, but it’s not as mysterious as it once was), and now LUG meetings are less the geekfests they once were and more all-inclusive and more comfortable for a computer-using public that seeks digital alternatives but are not obsessed by their technology.

The bus is traveling now, picking up passengers at every stop. If you’re not on it already, get on at the next stop.

Success at Mappano

As we wrote a few months ago in this blog, Ercole Carpanetto planned to hold Mappano Open Days in his town in Italy.

Mappano Open Days took place this weekend.

In correspondence with Ercole, he says that the event was a success, where they gave away 200 Live CDs and DVDs of GNU/Linux and Free/Open Source Software programs to some businessmen and a lot of students and home users.

Like Lindependence in Felton, people came from far and wide: Three women came from Milano, which is more than 150 kilometers away, and a teacher came from Bologna, which is about 200 kilometers away. That beats us: The farthest distance people came to Felton was from Oakland and Berkeley, about 80 miles tops.

I think pictures will be up soon enough either on Ercole’s blog or on the Mappano Open Days site.

Good one, Ercole! Grazie!

Thanks, Mike

Mike Cassidy, the Silicon Valley Dispatches columnist at the San Jose Mercury News, did me, the Linux community and everyone who uses Free/Open Source Software a great favor today by writing his column about Lindependence and what we’ve done, so far, in Felton.

The column is here. Go ahead and take a look. I’ll wait.

[And if for some reason that link doesn't work, just go to SiliconValley.com and click on the link with my picture next to it.]

I want to thank Mike for a.) having an artesian depth of patience with both Bob Lewis and me while we shoveled metric tons of history and general GNU/Linux information his way in the few hours that Mike stayed here (no, we didn’t keep him hostage), and b.) writing a column that I think captured the essence of Lindependence in Felton.

Karen Borchers also took great photos of me in the so-called “underground bunker.” My only regret is that she didn’t have her “slim-down-by-50-pounds” lens with her to make me look more like, oh I don’t know, Michael Phelps.

So, thanks Mike and Karen.